Dust and Butterfly's Wings
by Flame Tigress
Summary: Sesshomaru watches Rin sleep and considers mortality, immortality, and his own relationship (or lack thereof) with the little girl he brought back to life.


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Disclaimer: All characters, premises, etc. belong to Rumiko Takahashi, not me. I am making no money from this or anything else.

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Author's Note: Watched 12 DVDs of "Inuyasha" with 80 or so episodes. Became obsessed. Fell in love with both Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru. Just adore Angsty!Protagonists and Tortured!Bad Guys. See all my Frodo-angst and Tom Riddle/Voldemort fics.

This little vignette is kind of meant to be poetry-in-prose, if you know what I mean, which is why it's so short. It's in Sesshomaru's voice (though you probably could have figured that out). Sorry if I made him too poetic-minded, but I kind of see him as an ancient soul that would think poetically despite the fact that he is Mostly Evil. ("Now, Mostly Evil is still slightly good. But All Evil…well, with All Evil there's only one thing you can do. Kill him, then go through his clothes and look for loose change." Ever seen _The Princess Bride_?). I like metaphors. So do Voldemort and Sesshomaru.

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Dust and Butterfly's Wings

Night.

The sounds among the trees change, the calls and the whispers. The scents, too, change. One scent is still cold. Ill hunting is my lot again tonight, it seems.

Rin is already sleeping.

Very well. We sill stop for the night.

She lies beside a tree, curled as in the womb. Her chest rises and falls, a butterfly's wing, so frail the slightest move of my fingers would crush it, the barest brush of my claw would tear it apart. So fleeting, it lives and dies while I blink.

What is it to be mortal, so impermanent, so short-lived? Hurry, hurry about your trivial task, for soon, all too soon, it will be too late.

What is it to feel as she feels weariness and pain, a moment's joy soon forgotten, a moment's tears that pass as summer thunder?

What is it to have hair like this, dark and fine and tangled by sleep, the silk that is woven in the butterfly's cocoon as the breath is the butterfly's wing?

The human race are as ants, scurrying in futile circles, hurry, hurry, soon it will be winter, soon you will be dead. One human is as a butterfly, its breath a whisper of air against my palm, its life a flutter of wings. Today it is so gaudy, so active, its task of living so all important. Tomorrow it is dust.

But perhaps, though shaped from dust, its inordinately flashy colors may be beautiful before they crumble again to dust. Perhaps there is beauty in the very brevity of its life. Hurry, hurry, live as much as you possibly can, while you still have your brief time. _Live,_ before you die.

Is this what my father saw when he looked upon the woman on whom he sired my brother?

I do not mind Rin's presence, this silently fluttering butterfly. I almost enjoy it, the flash and flurry of her bright, frail little wings playing at the corner of my eye. Around Rin, I almost feel as if I am part of the tiny cycles and breath and pulse of every day.

I should shun this sort of engagement in that transient rush. Caring about what passes so quickly can only bring pain, the pain that mortals feel. I have never known pain. I do not wish to learn what pain has to teach.

If tolerance of Rin's presence becomes liking it, becomes desire for it, I am doomed to be disappointed in the end. I have already become accustomed to her existence. How would I know if I already have become – how do I express it? – attached to her? How would I identify what I have never known?

It is ill-advised to become attached to insects. How pointless to grieve when their moment of life is past.

But there is something beautiful about her hair. Dark and fine and tangled by sleep, ruffled and tossed askew by wind. Like her meaningless mortal's life, tossed helplessly by the winds of greater powers, tied in knots and tangled webs to no purpose.

If her life were somehow bound up with mine, perhaps it would lend meaning to her days, to be tied to something eternal. But her life is not bound to mine. That would mean that my life is bound to hers. No. The threads of our lives merely cross and soon will part. If my life were bound to Rin's, I would have to be attached to her. I am accustomed to her; I am tolerant of her. I pity her for her mortality. But I am not attached to her. I do not need her to be there. I do not – even the taste of the word in my mouth disgusts me – I do not love her. I do not know how to love, just as I do not know how to feel pain, and I do not want to learn. I doubt that I have the capacity to love. It is no wonder that I have lived so long and will never die.

Inuyasha loved, and see what it has brought him.

The wind has grown stronger, blowing wispy tendrils of Rin's black hair across her face and casting the shadow of my own hair across her sleeping form. She shivers. What is it to feel cold as mortals do, to tremble in the teeth of the wind?

I was wounded and vulnerable when Rin found me, and she tried to care for me when for so long no one had bothered to care for her. To some degree, I scorn her for this – what is the use in giving without expecting anything in return? But to some degree, I feel obligated to her, for although her attempts to help me were useless, still she gave me all she had to give. I feel as though I owe her something. I hate being in debt; it means someone has power over me. Perhaps I succor Rin to repay that debt. Or perhaps I repaid it with the words "What happened to your face?" – the first worlds of even offhand concern in her memory. Perhaps I let her tag along in return for the whisper of butterfly wings against my palm.

I kneel beside her as she shivers in the chill of the night wind. How strange to see my hair alongside hers, the straight fall of coarse silver and the fine, flyaway wisps of black. I take the fur – my own fur – from my shoulder and tuck it about her to warm her. I do not feel the cold; I do not need it.

Likely, this is the nearest Rin can remember and will ever feel again to the touch of a father. Though I feel little like a father – more like a mother duck.

And this is the nearest I will ever come to holding her as a daughter in my arms.


End file.
